Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is finally here for Gold and Ultra Edition owners, and the wait for this sequel has been painfully long! As you prepare to fend off the massive Tyranid swarms on your Steam Deck, here’s what you need to know about compatibility and performance.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 keyart overlaid on a Steam Deck.
Does Space Marine 2 work on Steam Deck?
Well, that’s a trick question. Will it start? Yes. Space Marines 2 uses Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC), and although EAC has been updated to be compatible with Linux, there is still that queasy feeling when you launch a game with anti-cheat for the first time. As you would expect, SteamOS runs the installation script (including installing Easy Anti-Cheat), spends several Minutes processing Vulkan shaders, running an Epic Games script to install dependencies, and finally launching the game.
I’m also happy to confirm that the game’s PVP and co-op modes are working, meaning EAC won’t be the game’s downfall.
But the real question is: Is Space Marine 2 run well on Steam Deck? Unfortunately not.
Saber Interactive’s Swarm tech places heavy demands on the Steam Deck’s aging Aerith APU. This means you’ll need to run the game on the Low graphics preset and crank up FSR to Performance or even Ultra Performance to even hit 30fps. Even in this configuration, the game’s busy battlefield, with its constant explosions, particle effects, and enemy swarms, slows the deck to a minimum. In the second mission, “Skyfire,” I saw consistently erratic frame rates and dips to 18fps.
Drops below 30fps are common on Deck, even at the lowest settings with FSR set to “Ultra … (+)
Also, FSR 2’s “Ultra Performance” setting technically renders the game at 3x lower resolution. That means an internal resolution of around 427×267, upscaled to 1280×800. It’s a blurry, shimmery mess. No resolution or setting I’ve tried could produce a consistent 30 fps.
However, the blame shouldn’t necessarily be placed on Valve. In a recent community update, Saber Interactive says the developers are “working on official Steam Deck support, but aren’t ready yet. We’re currently aiming for full Steam Deck support by year-end.”
Like Final Fantasy 16 for PC, it’s clearly not optimized for handhelds. Not yet.
AMD’s FSR 3 will be patched via a post-release update, however, so if that brings frame generation into play, that could easily tip the scales to “playable.” For now, though, I can’t recommend buying it if Steam Deck is your only gaming system.
Does Space Marine work on the ROG Ally?
I can confirm that Space Marine 2 runs smoothly out of the box on my ROG Ally Z1 Extreme using Bazzite, an excellent Linux-based alternative to Windows that’s tuned to the ROG Ally hardware.
Using Bazzite’s Turbo TDP setting, I get around 32-40 FPS on the Low Quality preset with FSR 2 on Balanced. AMD FSR is still a necessity here to stay under 30 FPS during combat.
I don’t expect the game to run well on the original ROG Ally, but it should run OK on the Legion GO, provided you play at 1080p or less and the lowest presets.
